White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby claims that the Nord Stream gas pipeline blasts were “an act of sabotage.”
This comes after the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines mysteriously exploded last year, allowing leaking natural gas to bubble up through the Baltic Sea. Both pipelines carry natural gas from Russia to Germany.
On Wednesday, Kirby told reporters that the U.S. believes that the pipelines were deliberately destroyed.
White House official John Kirby calls Nord Stream pipeline blasts an ‘act of sabotage’ https://t.co/EjguGLE3Wd pic.twitter.com/OhQ6VAA7Ez
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“We still do believe it was an act of sabotage,” he said during a White House press briefing.
Kirby also emphasized that the U.S. “was not involved in any way,” despite accusations in February that U.S. Navy divers planted bombs along the pipeline.
In September, President Joe Biden similarly called the gas leaks a “deliberate act of sabotage” and directed the blame toward the Russians.
“And now the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies,” Biden told reporters at the time. “At the appropriate moment, when things calm down, we’re going to be sending divers down to find out exactly what happened. We don’t know that yet exactly.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, called the pipeline explosions an act of terror, emphasizing the threat “transport, energy, or utilities” infrastructures are facing.
“The logic is cynical: to destroy and block cheap energy sources, hence depriving millions of people, industrial consumers of gas, heat, electricity, and other resources and forcing them to buy all this at much higher prices,” Putin said at an energy forum in Moscow last August.
“The attack on the Nord Streams has set an extremely dangerous precedent, which shows that any critical piece of transport, energy or communications infrastructure is under threat, regardless of its location, management, or whether it lies on the seabed or on land,” he continued.
As for the blasts earlier this month, Kirby said he didn’t want to get ahead of the investigations into the explosions being conducted by Germany, Sweden, and Denmark.
“So, I’m just not going to get ahead of that investigative work and I would have to refer you to each of those European countries to comment on their investigations,” he said at the time.
